Thelma looked up, her eyes burning with an intense feverish light.
"Nothing!" she replied.
"Nothing?" repeated her ladyship with emphatic astonishment.
"Nothing against Philip," continued the girl steadily. "For the blame is not his, but mine! That he is weary and broken-hearted must be my fault—though I cannot yet understand what I have done. But it must be something, because if I were all that he wished he would not have grown so tired." She paused and her pale lips quivered. "I am sorry," she went on with dreamy pathos, "sorrier for him than for myself, because now I see I am in the way of his happiness." A quiver of agony passed over her face,—she fixed her large bright eyes on Lady Winsleigh, who instinctively shrank from the solemn speechless despair of that penetrating gaze.
"Who gave you this letter, Clara?" she asked calmly.
"I told you before,—Miss Vere herself."
"Why did she give it to you?" continued Thelma in a dull, sad voice.
Lady Winsleigh hesitated and stammered a little. "Well, because—because I asked her if the stories about Sir Philip were true. And she begged me to ask him not to visit her so often." Then, with an additional thought of malice, she said softly. "She doesn't wish to wrong you, Thelma,—of course, she's not a very good woman, but I think she feels sorry for you!"
The girl uttered a smothered cry of anguish, as though she had been stabbed to the heart. She!—to be actually pitied by Violet Vere, because she had been unable to keep her husband's love! This idea tortured her very soul,—but she was silent.
"I thought you were my friend, Clara?" she said suddenly, with a strange wistfulness.